New organization being formed to help stop Asian women sex trafficking in Massachusetts

A press conference was held on December 13. The official launch of the non-profit organization, MULAN USA, will be announced.

Minka Ma, a citizen of China will speak on the alarming rise of trafficking of Asian women in MA. She said that those trafficked Asian women can be found in Asian erotic massage parlors, in ordinary nail salons and in residential apartment and homes.

There are 246 Asian Erotic massage parlors that openly offer erotic massages in MA. They are spread over 77 cities and towns, with Boston in the lead with 29. They operate openly because in MA it is easy to do so. Many traffickers who fear detection will use nail salons as front. This trend was also reported by Phillip Martin in a 4 part series for WGBH radio in July,2010. Since his report, we estimated that there are three times as many nail salons than massage parlors offering this service. These locations are opening too fast to keep up with them. However this is just the tip of the iceberg, traffickers are now rapidly going underground. Like in San Jose and San Francisco, MA traffickers of Asian women are using apartments and homes to conduct these activities. They advertised their erotic Asian women services on Craig’s List, the internet and local papers. When suspicion arises, they quickly move to another location,

In our analysis we believe that we can safely say there now are 1,200 Asian women being trafficked in MA. This is a conservative number as our research over a month long study of John sites on the internet indicated that this number could well be three times higher.

“MULAN will be a non-profit organization that takes a holistic approach to this issue,” Minka explains. “It will contain 6 departments, one of which will build a Rapid Response shelter. The shelter will act like a hospital trauma center, where victims of trafficking or domestic violence can rush in and be stabilized.

Growing up in China, Minka witnessed many instances of domestic violence and sex trafficking that bothered her greatly, In 2010, she came to the United States to study marketing for her family owned clothing manufacturing company. When she learned a shelter for Asian women in Boston existed, she became curious about its roots and wondered how she could establish one in China. She began to research the two organizations that were instrumental in the shelter’s start, Fashion for Shelter (FFS) and Friends and Shelter for Teens (F.A.S.T.). After reading articles from TIME magazine, The Boston Globe and The Herald about Cecilia-Nan Ding, the founder of F.A.S.T., Minka decided to contact her. “I am honored to have Cecilia introduce me at the press conference. After speaking with her, I realized that my small study group could evolve into an organization. Fashion for Shelter and F.A.S.T. began as groups no bigger than mine, and grew large enough to build a shelter in 3 years,” Minka says. “MULAN can continue these efforts, and I hope that someday I will be able to implement these changes in my country.

About Ling-Mei Wong 黃靈美

Editor of the Sampan, the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England
舢舨報紙總編輯。舢舨是全紐英倫唯一的中英雙語雙週報。